Echoes of 1995 for new Congress
By: David Rogers
January 5, 2011 08:34 PM EDT

Call it 1995 Lite: a one — rather than two — chamber Republican takeover this time, and no Newt Gingrich, just a lot of little would-be Gingriches running around accusing the White House of corruption or threatening to push the Treasury into default.

Every new Congress is a time for renewal and hope, and Wednesday’s ceremonies brought fresh blood to a stagnant Senate and elevated a working-class bar owner’s son to the speakership of the House. But there is also a sense of having seen this play before, just as the new fashion of reading the Constitution aloud brought echoes of Gingrich adding the Pledge of Allegiance to the daily prayer for lawmakers.

In the 16 years since, the biggest real change may be that the nation’s problems have gotten so great that both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue find it easier to retreat into their illusions.

How else to explain President Barack Obama claiming victory in the recent lame-duck session when he surrendered tens of billions of dollars in tax cuts to the wealthiest estates, committed $85 billion more to modernize nuclear weapons and then failed to fight for a $224 million increase in training programs for the physicians and nurses he will need to implement health care reform.

And just how does plain-spoken John Boehner — the new speaker — think he’s helping the unemployed in his home state of Ohio by having Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, like a high priest of the right, administer a constitutional oath this week to the speaker’s staff, like modern Knights of Malta?

Perhaps it’s all a momentary escape from the challenges ahead. Back in 1995, Republicans consumed months before finally enacting a $16.3 billion spending-cut package. Boehner must now cut four times that amount just to meet his campaign promise of rolling back domestic appropriations to Bush-era levels.

The big debt-ceiling skirmish during the 104th Congress — finally resolved in March 1996 — was over a $600 billion increase that brought the Treasury’s borrowing authority up to $5.5 trillion. By comparison, the government today is already at the $14 trillion level, and when the time comes to raise the limit this spring, Obama and Republicans will have a common interest in shouldering a far bigger increase than just $600 billion.

Privately, Republicans acknowledge they are haunted by the 1995 experience, which ended badly when government shutdowns provoked a backlash from voters and gave renewed leverage to President Bill Clinton. And, in approaching Obama now, GOP leaders appear more confident of what not to do than of where they are headed.

This helps explain their seeming confusion during the recent post-election lame-duck session last month. On the major issues of taxes and spending, Obama surrendered far more than he got, and the “don’t ask, don’t tell” repeal was a victory engineered more by congressional Democrats than by the White House. But Obama won the message war — especially with passage of his real priority, the START arms control agreement — and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) had to endure his colleagues complaining aloud of Democrats eating their “lunch.”

McConnell has since seemed to soften his tone, saying he is prepared to work with Obama when the two have common interests. And unlike 1995 — when Gingrich and Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole (R-Kan.) were longtime adversaries — McConnell made a point of coming over to the House on Wednesday when Boehner took the gavel as speaker.

Indeed — in a reversal of recent experience — the Senate may prove a more intriguing arena than the House in the new Congress. McConnell’s freshmen include a far higher percentage of experienced legislators than the new GOP class in the House. And from Dan Quayle to Mark Andrews and Paul Laxalt — the last escorting his fellow Nevadan, Democratic Leader Harry Reid, down the aisle to take his oath — it was striking Wednesday to see so many faces from the old, activist Reagan-era Senate of the ’80s.

There are surely small bipartisan victories available for the taking. The AFL-CIO remains opposed to the South Korea trade pact, but the auto workers and pipefitters are aboard, and this would seem an easy opportunity for Republicans to work with Obama next month, especially if former Clinton administration Commerce Secretary William Daley comes on as the president’s new chief of staff.

But just as in 1995, the battle over spending priorities will set the tone, and Republicans have already locked themselves into a major fight this winter over how the government will be funded for the remainder of this fiscal year ending Sep. 30.

Final tactical decisions are not expected before the House GOP retreat Jan 13-14, but the long-stated goal has to been to scale back spending to about $1.029 trillion, including an $84 billion (or 18 percent) cut from most domestic and foreign-aid programs for the current year.

This is significantly more than Senate Republicans were willing to embrace before the elections, and even among House Republicans, it’s not clear whether they fully comprehend the depth of the cuts required. The severe spending targets are meant to duplicate those set in a famous Christmas 2007 bargain with the Bush administration. But weeks before that deal, scores of House Republicans — some from Boehner’s home state of Ohio — voted to try to override a Bush veto on the grounds that more money was needed for education and health programs.

Privately, Republicans concede they may need two bites at the apple to get where they want to go. But the first round must come before March 4, when a stop-gap spending bill — needed to keep the government operating — is due to expire.

That’s one big difference between now and 1995: Nothing Gingrich faced back then was so difficult, so early as what confronts Boehner.